Texas Gov. Rick Perry is renewing his call for such lower-cost undergraduate degrees, in what he hopes will be the state's signature response to the national problem of rising college tuition and student debt.

"A $10,000 degree provides an opportunity for students to earn a low-cost, high-quality degree that will get them where they want to go in their careers and their lives," the Republican governor said in a statement last week. The governor has repeatedly urged schools to find ways to teach students more efficiently.

Ten Texas colleges have responded to the governor's challenge, first made a year ago. Angelo State University, a 7,000-student school in west Texas, announced Wednesday it will offer a $10,000 degree starting next fall. The 10 schools educate more than 50,000 students, or roughly 10% of the undergraduates at public universities in the state, but don't include the state's flagship public universities, such as the University of Texas at Austin.

As details of the colleges' plans have emerged, so have skeptics who question the financial and academic viability of pricing college at a fraction of the roughly $30,000 that students at Texas public universities pay on average over four years. They say reaching the $10,000 goal in some cases involves big scholarships for select students rather than real reductions in the cost of providing an education, and thus the path to a low-cost degree still isn't open to large numbers of students.

Taylor Ball, a graduate student in education at Angelo State, said the school's reduced-rate degree doesn't cover many significant costs, including campus housing, meal plans and textbooks. "It's those other fees that really get you," she said.

ENLARGE

Mr. Perry's plan comes at a time when tuition is soaring; undergraduate costs at public four-year universities climbed 139% between 1990 and 2010, according to the nonprofit College Board.

For the 2011-12 academic year, average tuition and fees across the nation were $8,244 at a four-year public university and $28,500 at a private institution, the College Board said.

Driving recent price increases are cuts in appropriations for higher education by states as they struggle to balance their budgets. Between 2006 and 2011 state governments appropriated 12.5% less per student, according to a March report by the State Higher Education Officers.

One result is that students are taking on increasing amounts of education-related debt. Americans owed $904 billion in student loans at the end of March, nearly 8% more than a year ago, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That compares with the $679 billion they owed on credit cards at the end of the first quarter.

A handful of public and private schools have experimented with ways to reduce costs. The University of the South in Tennessee cut tuition by 10% two years ago. That same year, Seton Hall University, a private school in New Jersey, cut tuition 68% for certain top students to match the in-state rate for Rutgers University, a nearby public school.

In Texas, the University of Texas at Arlington introduced a $10,000-degree track that will credit classes students take in high school and at a local community college, and incorporate a $10,000 scholarship to qualifying students.

Texas A&M University-Commerce, near Dallas, will offer a $10,000 degree in "organizational leadership" that will award some course credits to students as soon as they have demonstrated competency in a subject, such as accounting, by passing an exam—a potentially quicker route to a degree than the usual method of awarding credits only after students have spent a certain amount of time in class.

To offer its new $9,974 degree, starting next year, Angelo State will increase class sizes, offer courses online and will incorporate a $5,000 annual scholarship for participating students. To qualify, students must have relatively high standardized test scores and maintain a grade point average of 3.5 or better.

The program is designed for mature students, such as those with work experience who are prepared to be focused in their pursuit of a degree, said Angelo State President Joseph Rallo, who notes that younger students often take relatively light course loads and struggle to complete their degrees in four years.

The push for lower-cost degrees has generated widespread concern among Texas professors, who say they fear schools are sacrificing quality by seeking savings, for instance by increasing the use of adjunct professors.

Adjunct faculty often are paid on a per-class basis and have to teach heavy loads just to earn a modest living, leaving them little time to advise and guide student outside the classroom, said Ann McGlashan, a Baylor University professor who heads the Texas chapter of the American Association of University Professors.

Thomas Lindsay, an education expert at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank in Austin, said critiques of low-cost degrees miss the broader significance—that colleges, for the first time, are broadly thinking of ways to lower their costs.

"The governor has incentivized the sort of creativity on the part of schools that it is going to take to address the college affordability problem," he said.

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